Sundance Diary: Tuesday
by Richard Sheehan on January 25, 2012 in Festival Strategy
Another successful panel was held in the New York Lounge this morning, hosted by Post Factory founder Alex Halpern, on the change by filmmakers using digital as opposed to film. Director Ira Sachs, whose film ” Keep the Lights On” is in dramatic competition here at the festival, moderated the forum. Interestingly, Sachs likes the look of film so used it to shoot his drama, then converted it to digital in post.
While much of the discussion centered on cameras and technical issues, several points were of note:
– ARRI recently announced they will no longer produce cameras for film, only digital, marking a major stance in what will be available to filmmakers in the future and the direction of the camera industry.
– Although there are great benefits to filmmakers in being able to keep shooting or reshooting scenes because there is not the cost of actual film, some directors and actors tend not to spend as much effort on trying to get it right the first or second time. This can result in a lot of extra work in post, and a run up in costs as well. Mr. Sachs said that in the course he teaches at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, he limits the number of takes the young filmmakers can shoot to make them more confident in what they want to get out of the scene.
Richard Sheehan, Christine Vachon & Jerry Stoeffhaas
As usual, the lounge was busy all day with many meetings set up in the afternoon. At one point, producer Christine Vachon stopped in, and we were able to have a brief conversation. She is a big fan of filming in NYS, and we spoke a little bit about how she transformed both the city and suburbs of NY to 1920’s Los Angeles for the HBO mini-series, “Mildred Pierce” to take advantage of the tax incentives offered by NYS. Ms. Vachon has several projects lined up for 2012.
Sales are happening! The Weinstein Company ( I have seen Harvey out & about here this week) has picked up Stephen Frears’s film, “Lay The Favorite”, starring Bruce Willis. Fox Searchlight purchased the most talked about film at the festival , “Beasts of the Southern Wild”, which is said to have amazing performances by non-professional actors. Fox also paid $6MM for “The Surrogate”, starring Helen Hunt. Millennium Entertainment has picked up the Robert DeNiro starrer, “Red Lights” and Sony Picture Classics took “Celeste & Jesse”.
As of this writing, the latest pick up was for my client, “Arbitrage”, which has been bought by the team of Roadside Attractions & Lionsgate. These companies joined forces on one of last year’s Sundance hits, “Margin Call”, which also focused on the financial crisis and had the most profitable Indie releases of 2011 by aggressively marketing the theatrical and VOD release simultaneously.
Parties – last night was a big party night. We started off at the NYS Governor’s Office for Film party at the Blue Iguana, which was packed with familiar faces from the East Coast celebrating either their own films or films that they represent. We had to skip the GLAAD celebration over at the Sky Lounge, but heard it too was well attended.
Later on, we headed over to the Riverhorse Cafe for Kodak’s annual party, which always has a great band. Everyone was letting loose on the dance floor. There was representation from every facet of the film community, including The Film Society of Lincoln Center, MOMA, the press and many filmmakers. Spotted dancing up a storm at one point was the lovely red headed actress, Carrie Preston, best known for her television roles on “True Blood” and ” The Good Wife”.